


What Happened to Monday

by forest_hime



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Siblings, What Happened to Monday AU, lots and lots of siblings for everybody
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 04:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17175686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forest_hime/pseuds/forest_hime
Summary: From the Netflix movie of the same name.The population has tipped, nearly doubling in size every year. Resources are scarce and only growing worse. A mutated crop assuages the problem for a time, but when it’s discovered that women have started having multiple children at an alarming rate, the source is pinpointed back to the mutation, leaving the world with even less resources and even more people.In the midst of this, a new government organization begins rising to prominence: The Child Allocation Bureau. They ensure every person sticks to the stringen new law of “one family, one child.”Siblings become illegal. Families are torn apart and their children are thrown into cryogenic chambers to keep them out of the way until the population eventually thins out.But when worst comes to worst, not everyone is willing to let The Bureau make the decisions for people’s lives.





	What Happened to Monday

**Author's Note:**

> I started this way back in August just because the idea wouldn’t leave me. I’ll warn you now, I’m not good at actually seeing a story all the way through, but I worked too hard on these first few chapters to just leave it collecting dust on my tablet forever.  
> Also, to keep anyone from worrying that this is going to go somewhere weird I'll tell you straight-up: This does not devolve into HankCon at any point lmao

   Hank shouldn't have left the hospital, but it was all he had left in him to do. He'd been reaching a breaking point when he bursted through the front doors, and when he'd sufficiently yelled at every nurse and doctor stupid enough to try reasoning with him, there was barely anything left tethering him to the ground. He dragged the building, looking for anyone he could square the blame for this on -- anyone but himself -- then stormed out, yelling about needing air that wasn't sterilized to all hell.  
   He kept on through the blistering cold parking lot and didn't stop until he reached his car. He leaned against the hood, and here, away from the noise and endless flurry of questions and condolences, he stared at his shaking hands.  
   All these years, Cole had been less than a hundred miles away, and Hank had no idea. He should have looked harder. He should have hired someone to track his son down liked he'd told himself a million times he would. Instead, Hank left him alone, said if Cole didn't want him in his life then that was his business as an adult.  
   And now Cole was dead.  
   Hank checked his phone, looking for something to preoccupy his hands until they stabilized enough to hold a cigarette, and two missed calls from two unknown numbers popped onto the screen. They were timestamped a little over two hours ago, about the time Hank had been yelling at the receptionist in the waiting room. A new voicemail notification appeared underneath the missed calls, but Hank's focus slid past it. It shifted to the middle school picture of Cole that had been his phone's wallpaper nearly as long as he'd owned the phone. The notification was covering Cole's eyes.  
   A voice rang out over the parking lot, dragging in Hank's attention. A group of people were standing by the entrance to the ER -- a civilian woman and about three members of staff. Two security officers were talking to here, their backs to Hank. The woman seemed to be frantic and was talking loud enough for him to hear her all the way over here.  
   Hank turned back to his phone and brought up his voicemail, leaving it on speaker. He waited through the robotic monologue for the message to play, his thumb positioned to delete it as soon as it started. He was perfectly aware of how much money he owed and to who, and he was sick of these people breathing down his neck at the worst possible time every goddamn day.  
   The first message was another automated voice saying they were calling "from the government regulated department of--"; he cut it off mid-sentence.

   " _Deleted_."

   The woman was screaming now. She was thrashing against the hold of one of the security officers as she tried to get at the other officer. Hank hadn't registered their uniforms the first time, or the large, black CAB van parked just a few feet away from them, the back of it just visible behind some decorative hedges. The Bureau was here.  
   "Please!" she screamed. "My neighbor's going to take custody of my son. Please don't taker her. Please! You said I had time!"  
   There was a bundle in the second officer's arms, and the closer he brought it to the van, the louder the woman wailed. The staff circled around her were calmly trying to keep her quiet and prevent it from becoming more of a scene.

   " _Next_ _unheard_ _message_ :"  
  
   "Lieutenant Anderson, I'm calling on behalf of your son. I don't have a lot of time."  
   Hank froze. His sight of the woman faded out of focus; a backdrop to the voicemail.  
   "My name isn't necessary. I'm a doctor who knew Cole and his wife. Cole called me a few hours ago — something about an accident. He asked me if I could get them out of the apartment before anyone found them, and we did, but we need you to come get them as soon as possible. We've already drawn too much attention so tonight at the latest. Call back at this number for the address, and please delete this message."  
   The message ended with a beep.  
   Hank played it back, then played it back again, but the words made no sense. He didn't know  who them was or why they would be in Cole's apartment during his wreck.  
   Hank dialed the number back and listened to it ring. The engine of the CAB van revved to life and slowly made its way through the parking lot and away from the hospital, leaving the woman crumpled to her knees on the sidewalk. She angrily batted off any of the staff who tried touching her.  
   The same voice from the message answered the phone. "Hank Anderson?"  
   Hank sucked in a cold breath through his teeth. "You get to know my name, but I don't get yours?"  
   "For my own self-interest, yes." The man was practically whispering into the receiver.  
   "What the hell do you want from me?" Hank said. "And don’t you dare bullshit me."   
   "It'll be easier to explain when you see for yourself. I can't stay on this line long, but know that this is, for all intents and purposes, Cole's last request. If that means anything to you."  
   "For the love of-- See what for myself?"  
   "They'll explain more when you get there." The man started rattling off an address faster than Hank could find somewhere to type it out. He'd barely written out half of it before the man spoke again: "Don't try to contact me. This is out of my hands." There was a slight hesitation. "I'm sorry about your loss." The call dropped with a light click.  
   Hank stared at the blinking call ended message before it closed and brought him back to his home screen. He let out an annoyed grunt and clicked the phone off. He looked back at the hospital. The woman had left her place on the sidewalk, leaving the parking lot in silence, the only sound coming from the rush of cars on the nearby highway. Hank tried to picture himself going back in the hospital, where his son's broken, lifeless body was growing colder. Where every person he talked to would just work to hammer the reality in harder and harder.   
   He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He made his way through it, biding his time, then flicked the butt to the ground and pushed off from the hood. He got in his car; Cole could deal without him for a few hours. 

 

   It was nearly ten by the time Hank pulled up to the address. The street was helpfully marked by the basketball sized pothole that nearly took out his car on the turn. He checked the address a hundred times and still nearly drove past the building. It was so worn-down that at first glance, Hank had mistaken it for abandoned. He still wasn't entirely convinced it wasn't, save for desperate squatters and people dealing in secrets.  
   Whatever common sense Hank had left rattling around in his head was telling him to get the hell out of here. Go back to his son; be a responsible father for fucking once, especially for the last chance he's got. But the man's words wouldn't let Hank just leave this alone. This man knew Cole. He said he'd talked to Cole just a few hours ago. He could be the last person Cole ever talked to. Hank couldn't figure out where the ruse was or what this man stood to gain from leveraging this against him.  
   More than anything, Hank wanted to know what Cole had been doing through those missing years. He need this man to be telling the truth.   
   The closest parking lot for the building was gated and chained shut, so he left his car in a side street, chancing it was out of the way enough to stave off a tow truck. When he shut off his engine and the quiet fell down around him, Hank took a moment to sit there. He pulled a flask out of his jacket and took a heavy swing. He gave it a second to settle, then he took another one. Whatever the hell was coming for him, he let it comfort him that he wasn't approaching it sober. He put the flask back in his jacket and kicked the car door open. He headed across the street to the building, his hand rested just above his gun holster as he went. Inside, he was met by a concrete stairwell and every step he took echoed through the dilapidated building, announcing his presence to anyone who cared to listen for it. He followed the address a few floors up to where he thought his blundering thumbs had been trying to type in his notes and opened the landing door to a dark, narrow hallway lined with metal doors. He came to one of the doors on the end and-- hesitated. He took in his surroundings one more time. It still wasn't too late for him to turn back.    
   He knocked twice on the metal door and waited. There was no sound from the other side. He couldn't see any light coming from the edges of the door frame. He turned to check the ceiling for any cameras or security devices when he heard the heavy thunk of a lock. The door slowly started to open inward and a well-dressed woman stepped into view. She didn't look particularly happy to see him.   
   "Lieutenant Anderson," she said. She glanced past him down the hallway then she stepped back to let him inside. "You'll want to come in. We don't have much time."  
   "Yeah," Hank said, pushing his way in, "I got that."  
   She waited for him to come in before shutting and bolting the door behind him. There was a large metal guard horizontal across the door, and she pushed a button on the holographic pad beside it to lock it in place.  
   "What are you holding in here that needs that kind of security?"  
   The woman typed out a few strings of number on the holographic pad before answering. "Siblings."   
   "Siblings?" Hank shot back.  
   She turned to him. "I'm sorry, this whole ordeal must have been so chaotic for you. We weren't even sure you'd show, and let me be the first to say how glad I am that you did. I'm the head nurse for this area."  
   "You're-- okay, hold on a minute."  
   "I know it's a lot to put on you all of the sudden. If you need a moment--"  
   "I'm gonna need more than a moment." Hank rubbed at the exhaustion in his eyes and took a second to recenter himself. He was right to drink before he came in here. "So, let me get this straight. You're running an underground sibling scam, and you dragged me out here for… what exactly?"  
    He gave a cursory sweep of the room he'd walked into, some kind of converted loft space turned pop-up clinic. This one was cleaner than most sibling trafficking and harboring dens had the dignity to be, but that didn't cover the skeevy, back-alley air to the place. Their location didn't help it any.  
    A monitor system was set up by the front door, its cameras station on the building's entrances and the surrounding streets. There were a few other readouts and what sounded like a police scanner turned low. Every so often someone would come out from one of the back rooms just long enough to check the monitors, then just as quickly disappear into the back again.   
   The nurse pulled her mouth into a tight line. "We're licensed medical professionals providing a service, Lieutenant."  
   "Forgive me if I'm gonna need a second opinion." His eyes caught on a mattress pushed off to the side of the room. It had been stripped of its sheets, but that hadn't gotten rid of the dried blood smattering the edges. Hank grimaced. “You know what? I think I’ve had enough.”  
   “No, please, hear me out,” the nurse said. “If you would follow me—”  
   “I heard you fine the first time, and it sounded like a whole lot of bullshit. My son hasn’t been dead ten fucking hours and you vultures come in here and play it like this is your big chance to get some illegal kids off your hands. I should be calling you in myself.”  
   “Mr. Anderson, if you would just give me a moment.”  
   “I’ll pass. Thanks for wasting my time.” He needed to get back. God, he needed to plan a funeral. What had he been thinking coming here? At any other time, Hank wouldn’t have fallen for them and their cryptic bullshit, but these people had really perfected their technique for weeding out mourners at their weakest. The guy who’d called him probably was a real doctor. He’d probably been standing right over Cole’s body, lazily eyeing Cole’s chart as he took that call. Hank was going to throttle someone at that hospital for letting this happen.  
   “These aren’t just anyone’s children,” the nurse tried again as Hank moved for the door. “These were Cole’s.”  
   “Cole and Rachel didn’t have kids,” Hank said flatly.  
   “I promise you they did.” The nurse picked up a clear piece of glass off a nearby table and flicked her fingers across it, bringing up the interface of a tablet. She scrolled through it until she found the file she was looking for. “They’re legally registered as having a son.”  
   This made Hank stop. “They’re— what?”  
   “Connor Anderson. Almost two years old. He has a registered ID number and citizen form.” She turned the tablet so he could see.  
   Begrudgingly, Hank moved away from the door. He took the tablet from her hands and studied the file. he couldn’t tell what server they were pulling their information from, but it didn’t looked like anything government regulated. Still, this was going through a lot of trouble just to fake a kid. And why just the one? Why register anyone at all if they were going to be so secretive about it?  
   “Why wouldn’t they tell me this at the hospital?”  
   “If they noticed,” the nurse said, reaching to take her tablet back, “I imagine they assumed you as the grandfather would have already known. But someone will eventually take note of the child who seemingly disappeared without a word, and they will start asking questions if you don’t legally register guardianship.”  
   “Cole would have told me.” Even saying the words, Hank wasn’t sure he believed that.  
   “Not necessarily. We’ve found it very common for parents harboring illegal siblings to keep it a secret from everyone, including close family.”  
   The nurse swiped through a few more nodes on her tablet before stopping on a series of thumbnails. She opened one and turned the screen to Hank again, but it took him a second to understand what he was looking at. It was a photo of a photo. Cole looked older than the last time Hank had seen him, letting his hair grow out and seeming a little worn around the eyes, but he was smiling. next to him was a child who couldn’t have been any older than a year. The nurse swiped to the next picture and another picture of Cole and this child appeared. This time the boy was noticeably younger, a few months old at most, with his eyes barely open. The nurse swiped through to the next picture, and the next, each one of Cole and this child over what looked like the course of a year or so.  
   “We took these pictures when we got the boys out of the apartment. We burned the physical copies but I can send you these if you’d like. We got rid of everything that would indicate more than one child had lived there.”  
   Hank ran his hand over his mouth and the five o’clock shadow that had already started in above his lip. He couldn’t get a grasp on any one question rattling around in his head and he stared at the screen a little dumbfounded. He had a grandson.  
   “How would that indicate anything?” He asked finally. “Just the one kid?”  
   “You don’t see it? Here.” The nurse went back to the first picture. “See the darker freckles? One on the cheek and these two under the left eye? Now.” She swiped to the next one. And the next. And the next. It was the same boy, over and over, with a different smattering of freckles in every picture. And, Hank noticed this time through, the boy had a vastly different countenance in every picture, especially as he got older. In some, he shied away from the camera with a weak smile or looked like he’d rather be anywhere else; in others he was excitedly reaching towards the lens or smiling like getting his picture taken was the best day of his young life.  
   In one of the pictures, Cole was in the foreground and the boy was behind him at the dinning room table, laughing and covered in a mess of food coloring and flour. On his right arm was an official ID bracelet.  
   “It’s clear these are different children once you’re looking for it,” the nurse said, pulling the tablet back. “We figured it would be better not to chance leaving these behind.”  
   Hank was staring at the back of the tablet, his hand still running absently over his mouth. “The one with the bracelet,” he said, “that’s Connor then? You’re telling me he just registered the one and was gonna leave the rest in a closet somewhere?”  
   The nurse blinked at him, then she looked back down at the tablet and flipped through a few of the pictures again. “Oh. No, I guess you can’t see it here, but they all have bracelets. I should have been more clear. Connor isn’t just one of them. Cole registered all of them as one person. He put them under the same identification number and gave them all fully functioning bracelets. We’ve double-checked and they do all come up with the same file for the same person. I don’t know how Cole managed it, but it’s very impressive. They might not all be able to go out at the same time, but it gives them far more freedom than most in this situation have.”  
   Hank knew ex-bureau agents could be bribed to do anything, especially rig an ID card, but their fees for a single job were notoriously exorbitant. And if Cole went and paid for God knows how many of these — Three? Four? That would have taken everything he had.  
   “How many are there exactly?” Hank asked.  
   “The boys? Seven.”  
   The word hit Hank like a jolt, Cole’s static and slurred voice creeping back into him like a ghost:  
  
    _Some days it’s like there’s seven, some days it’s like there’s twenty, and I c…I can’t, dad…I’m…_  
  
   “I hate to put all of this on you like this,” the nurse said. She must have seen the unfixed look in Hank’s eyes and tried to soften her tone, like he was an injured animal. “And with everything that’s happening… I understand this is hard, but they really don’t have anywhere else to go. I think if you just saw them—”  
“They’ve got The Bureau.”  
   There was a heavy beat of silence. Hank could almost make out some of the voices popping out from the police radio.  
   The nurse spoke carefully. “We called you to avoid The Bureau.”  
   Hank nodded a bit, mostly to himself.

    _She’s dead. God, dad, sh… she…_

   “So I’m gonna come in here and risk my own ass to stuff these illegal ankle-biters away somewhere safe until I’m too old to remember my own name? Alright. Tell me something first. How did Rachel die?”  
   The nurse furrowed her brow. “I’m sorry?”  
   “You know, the mother? How’d she die?”  
   Hank appreciated the apprehension on the nurse’s face now. She didn’t like the direction the conversation had taken.  
   “I’m sorry,” she said. “I assumed you…”  
   “Yeah, I can guess, but humor me.”  
   His voice came out more strained than he’d expected. Every piece of the last few years was falling into place, like the slow, creeping dread down his spine, forming into some terrible picture. Questions he’d been wanting answers to, and now that he had them, he wanted to take them back. But for years those questions had been all he’d had of his son.  
   Cole had been screening his calls since he’d dropped out of college and ran off with his wife of two weeks. Hank assumed they were making it work, but God knew where or how. Every call that finally got through was just Hank asking Cole where he was, if he was even in the country anymore, if he was making it by okay — only for Cole to respond with a line of nonanswers then quickly come up with an excuse to end the call.  
   Hank knew a long time ago that he’d fucked up when it came to the whole dad thing. Most of Cole’s teenage years had been the two of them at each other;s throats for every minor disagreement. But Cole had always been a little bit bigger than his current situations allowed for. He made plans two steps ahead when the step immediately ahead of him needed desperate attention. He was anxious to go somewhere. Do something. Anything. He wanted out, and his focus only allowed him so much self-restraint. far be it from Hank to hold the kid back — if anything, he usually found himself trailing behind whatever fixation Cole was running towards next — but he had his limits, those moments when “father” finally won over “friend.” It had been an increasingly tenuous but manageable balance when Cole was younger, but by the time his high school graduation came around, everything came to a boil. Cole wasn’t a child anymore. Any impulsive mistakes he made now he made as an adult, and Hank’s patience for it was growing thin. Everything became an argument. Every small, innocuous thing became a source of tension, only severed when someone left the room in a rage.  
   And then one day Cole was the one who left the room, and he never came back. He took Rachel and ran, cutting ties with everyone they knew. It was radio silence for four years.  
   The last time he had talked to Hank, actually talked, hadn’t been until eight months ago. Hank’s phone had gone off at one in the morning and he’d nearly dropped the damn thing when he read the caller ID. He was at a bar and probably in the least ideal condition to be getting himself back in his son’s life. But when he answered, any fears of that vanished. Cole was wasted out of his mind and barely able to form more than a handful of coherent sentences at a time, going on and on about disconnected things Hank had no context for.  
   “I thought I could do this. But she’s gone and I just…” Cole took a shaky breath. “Some days it’s like there’s seven, some days it’s like there’s twenty, and I c… I can’t, dad… I’m… I can’t. She was…”  
   “Who? Cole, who?” Hank had picked himself up rom the bar and made his way out onto the dimly lit sidewalk. A light drizzle had started up, but there weren’t any awnings to overhangs for him to stand under. Hank ignored it. “What’s going on, son? Where’s Rachel?”  
   It was a small eternity before Cole pulled himself together enough to speak. “She’s dead. God, dad, sh… she…”  
   When Cole broke down again, he didn’t come back up, and Hank couldn’t get another word out of him for the rest of the call. Hank tried calling back in the days and weeks and months that followed, only to be sent straight to voicemail every time. Eventually an automated message answered to tell him the number was no longer in service. Three months later, Cole was dead.  
   And Hank was here, in this dingy loft, wishing he was anywhere else.  
   The nurse cleared her throat and looked down at the screen of her tablet. “We warned Rachel she shouldn’t try to give birth to that many in an uncontrolled environment, but she insisted on having them at home. She didn’t want to risk leaving and sneaking them back across town after. We did our best with limited resources, and she almost made it. She made it long enough to see five of the boys before she lost too much blood.”  
   Hank nodded to himself again, his eyes fixing on the floor, and he paced away from her.  
   The nurse continued: “We warned her, but she said she knew the risk she was taking.”  
   Two years. For two years, Rachel had been dead and Cole had been harboring a pack of illegal siblings all by himself. And for what? Rachel had always been vocal about her distaste for the Child Allocation Act, even in the short time Hank knew her, but this was insane. She was risking more than her own life. She was risking Cole. Of course Cole wouldn’t turn in the kids after his wife just died giving birth to them. She knew she risked leaving him to fend for himself, and she buried him.  
   A man jogged out from one of the back rooms and quietly muttered something to the nurse. She glanced at the readout on her bracelet and a look of unease crossed her face, then she nodded to him and he left back the way he came. “Look, I understand your hesitation, Lieutenant, but—”  
   “But nothing,” Hank cut in. “This whole operation is insane, and I’m about to call The Bureau myself if you don’t leave me the hell out of it. I’m sorry they made this your problem, but you’re not about to make it mine.”  
   He moved for the door again. The nurse called out to him, surprised, and when he didn’t stop she called again, louder:  
   “If The Bureau gets these boys then Cole died for nothing!”  
   Hank had his hand above the holographic pad, but he didn’t move. The air thinned. “My son,” he said, slowly, turning, “died because a fucking self-driving machine lost its goddamn circuits and drove off the side of a bridge.” He started towards her again. “They told me he was only in that car because of a house call for his job. One of his jobs. One. He had three. Three fucking full-time jobs! And I was asking myself, for what? Why was he working three fucking full-time jobs from home? Why was he in that car?”  
   The nurse tried to get a word in, but Hank kept on.  
   “Don’t you _dare_ come at me with this bullshit like he went down fighting for some great cause. He died because of seven goddamn leeches who shouldn’t even exist. Both of them died because they were young and stupid and made the one mistake they couldn’t come back from.”  
   The nurse put up her free hand placatingly. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Mr. Anderson. I’m so sorry. That was completely out of line and I shouldn’t have said it. It was insensitive.”  
   Hank paced away from her again in a huff, and she gave him a second to settle.  
   “But please,” she said tentatively, “I cannot in good conscious let these boys become another victim to the system after I’ve seen everything their parents have done to get them this far. The fact that they came to us at all when she was pregnant means this must have been very important to them. Our rates run at some of the highest in the country for our level of security and discretion. We’ve been doing this a very long time. Our doctor was the one who’d helped Rachel’s mother when she had her children. That’s how she found us.”  
   Hank looked back at her. “Rachel was a sibling?”  
   “She was. Her sisters were detained by The Bureau about ten years ago. She knew she had a family history of multiple births so she reached out to us as soon as she found out she was pregnant.”  
   At this rate, it would have surprised Hank if there was anything about Cole’s life that he had actually known.  
   “I won’t say they died in some great martyrdom to the boys’ cause, but—” the nurse took a second to choose her words, “—I do think it’s fair to say they both knew this was a risk, and they both took it anyway. These boys meant something very important to them.”  
   She paused and watched Hank for a reaction, for him to leave or argue her down. He looked away from her, but he didn’t move for the door, so she kept on.  
   “Please listen to me. Just go see them. Give Cole that much. When he had his wreck his only priority was to get the boys out. He specifically told us to call you. He said you were the only one he could trust to do this for him.”  
   Again, she waited, but Hank stayed where he was. That was enough for her. the nurse turned and headed for one of the back rooms. When she disappeared inside, she left the door open behind her. After a few seconds of silent deliberation and staring daggers into the triple secured front door, Hank swore under his breath and followed after.  
   The room he entered was strange and immediately unsettling. Something about it was off. It was nearly twice as long as it was wide, the two walls on either end maybe six feet at most with the wall opposite the door at least thirteen to fifteen feet. The wallpaper was a terrible repeating pattern of fleur-de-lis on a maroon backdrop. It was hard to look at for long. More than anything, the room was completely empty, save for a few nondescript boxes stacked in. The border off to the right.  
   “Please shut the door,” the nurse said, not looking up from a message she was typing out on her tablet.  
   “What is this? Where are the kids?”  
   “I’m showing you. Please, the door.”  
   It was hitting Hank again how careless he’d been in coming here. he hadn’t told a soul where he was and left himself at their mercy. At the very least he could have left a voicemail at his house. Left an email in his drafts. Something. This whole situation had been one big lesson in what not to do at police academy.  
   He closed the door, if reluctantly, but brought his hand back to his gun holster. “You’d better start talking fast.”  
   The nurse took a moment to finish her message. “Sorry.” She shut off the screen. “Unrelated business.” She turned to the wall behind her and seemed to search for something. She reached up and placed her hand over one of the fleur-de-lis, holding it there. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then an electronic hum thrummed out from somewhere in the room and a pulse rippled out from her hand and through the rest of the wall. Like a tube monitor blinking off, the terrible wallpaper faded away, revealing the rest of the room behind a dividing glass wall.  
   Hank’s eyebrows shot up. Holy hell, the number of sibling trafficking spots that had probably blindsided their department with this kind of technology. Those in the trafficking business weren’t known to have the kind of disposable funds or resources needed for this level of security, not for a place that might be raided clean at any second. He’d bet money this thing was soundproof, too.  
   The room on the other side looked like a minimalist preschool. It was clean and had a large, plush rug covering the stained concrete flooring. There was a couch in the center pushed back against the wall, and some cribs of varying quality off to the side, piled like they were in a storage unit. There was a bin of toys sitting next to a low bookshelf with some young reader books stacked inside. Off to the left was a pile of personal items — a suitcase, small boxes, a few overstuffed grocery bags full of miscellaneous things — pushed up against the glass, next to a cut out in the glass that looked like the only door inside.  
   The boys were huddled together on the couch, pushed together as tightly as they could possibly fit themselves. Most of them were staring in wide-eyed confusion at the man from earlier, practically a kid himself who seemed more first-year med student than anywhere near licensed. He was kneeling down in front o the couch and trying to talk to them with a reassuring smile. From the way the boys were only pushing themselves farther away, he clearly wasn’t earning anyone’s trust.  
   Hank knew immediately that looking at them had been a mistake. The resemblance was unmistakeable, down to their wisps of hair to those same smatterings of freckles. He recognized one of the boys near the center as the one in the picture with food coloring on his hands. He had a darker freckle above his right eye and another closer to his nose. Any trace of the happiness in that picture was gone.  
   It had been easy to lessen them when they were just photos of photos, when they weren’t right in front of him and there was some room for plausible deniability. But for all the world, they were just an assortment of moving, breathing photographs from Cole’s own baby book.  
   Most of the boys were crying, their faces red and streaked with tears. One of them had his eyes. Shut as tightly as he could get them and had burrowed himself down between his brothers. He had both of his tiny hands pressed against his mouth as though he were holding back a scream.  
   That struck Hank as particularly strange. He studied the others, and even through the glass, he could tell they were all oddly mute. They were crying, but it wasn’t the loud, open-mouthed crying of toddlers. They seemed to be intentionally making as little noise as possible. Barely two years old and Cole had already ingrained in them a necessity for being quiet.  
   The man stood, making some of the boys flinch and try to turn in closer to each other.  
   “It’s safe to say they’ve never been around strangers,” the nurse said. “This might be one of the few times they’ve ever even left that apartment.”  
   Hank’s hand went back to his mouth. “Fucking Christ.” They hadn’t asked for this any more than the rest of them had. Even for their own sakes, they shouldn’t exist.  
   “I’d give you more time, but as I've said, we’ve already had them here too long. We’re going to start loading them for transport.”  
   Hank had to give the words a second to register. “Whoa, hold on. I didn’t—”  
   “We have an authorized transport van waiting outside that should help them get through security gates without suspicion. We’ll have someone follow your car back to your house—”  
   Another woman came in the room and excused herself as she passed them to get to the glass door.  
   “—but please know that once you leave here, we take no more responsibility for these children.”  
   The other woman was behind the glass, exchanging words with the man and occasionally gesturing towards the boys. Hank glanced between their interaction and the nurse in front of him. “Slow down. I’m not—”  
   “We can’t risk this any further than we already have. I’m sure you understand.”  
   The man was talking to the boys again, but their focus was squarely on the woman as she stepped closer to them. They seemed to realize what was about to happen a second before it did. The man picked up one of the boys, and the woman had to hold back the other six as they started trying to move forward and grab for their brother. Hank could read the words it’s okay repeatedly coming from the woman’s mouth.  
   The boy being taken from the room was staring back at his brothers in horror. The farther away they got, the more he struggled against the man to get free.  
   The nurse’s attention had gone back to her tablet. “We usually have a sedative prepared to keep this from getting difficult, but we didn’t have time. They’re quiet enough that hopefully we won’t need it.”  
   The man passed them to get out into the main room, but Hank caught him by the arm before he got too far, holding him in place. “For the last time, I told you,” Hank said, his eyes never leaving the nurse, waiting for her to look at him. “I’m not doing this. I’m not taking them. I can’t quit my job. I’m not Cole. Where are you expecting me to keep them? There are two rooms in my house and I’m at work all day. What am I supposed to do with them during the funeral? Or after?”  
   The nurse was getting impatient. “I can’t pretend to know how people do it; we never ask for those details. But I know people do it every day. there have been a handful of siblings we’ve worked with who have made it to their teens. I’ve heard a few have gotten to adulthood unscathed, but we generally lose contact long before then, so it’s hard to know for sure. All I know is it can be done.”  
   “And how many siblings were there at a time? Two? Three?” Hank asked. The nurse responded by tightening her jaw. Hank nodded. “That’s what I thought. You know you’re not asking me to give them some full life. You know they’re gonna get caught sooner or later and you’re asking me to put everything on the line for that? This isn’t a maybe. With seven of them, they’re going to be found, and it will all fall back on me.”  
   “Uh, sir,” a voice cut in.  
   Hank glanced back at the man who looked a little pained by the death grip on his arm. The boy he was carrying had put his full attention on Hank, momentarily stopping his fit to stare. Hank let the man go, if only so he didn’t have to look at that kid anymore.  
   The nurse watched them leave. “Cole is asking you for this. Not me. My only priority is getting them to a new location before the attention we’ve inevitably drawn comes to a head.  
   “But you’re right.” The nurse turned back to Hank. “Between you and me, I’ve heard word that The Bureau’s turned their interest to testing in cryogenics. They want to have the process stabilized and rolled out within ten years. With any luck, you’ll only have to put up with the boys for a few years, do your son his dying wish, then hand them over to be frozen until the population thins out. They’ll be out of everyone’s hands and you won’t owe them or Cole anything. They’ll live in a time when someone might actually want them.”  
   Hank scowled. “That’s fucking terrible.”  
   “Worse than you handing them over now just to be killed?”  
   “They won’t—”  
   “They will. No matter how they sugar-coat it with legalities, you of all people know the way this always ends, Lieutenant. There’s not enough resources left in this world for orphans. These boys will end up dead within the year if The Bureau gets them. Cole knew that.”  
   Hank couldn’t deny to himself that Cole had seen some kind of merit in keeping these boys around. He had been dying, bleeding out in an overturned car. He shouldn’t have been conscious at all, and even if he was he had to have known it wouldn’t be for long. Everything was out of his hands now. Someone would go to his apartment to vacate his stuff and they’d find the boys. They’d had a longer run at life than most siblings ever saw. He had to have know they wouldn’t last forever, and he could be proud that he’d given them this long. But somehow that wasn’t enough. With whatever borrowed time he had left, Cole made a call and gave them one last push at life. And it all hinged on his hope that his father would take them. Just another risk.  
   The room fell into agitated silence, more on Hank’s part than the nurse’s. The man came back empty-handed and with a slight urgency in his steps now as he passed them. With each boy he took, the ones left behind became increasingly jittery and frantic, holding on with a little more desperation to each brother as they were taken away.  
   “You should probably start thinking of names for them,” the nurse said. “Give the boys something to attach themselves to as soon as possible.”  
   Hank looked away from the fourth boy being taken out of the room. This one seemed the most on the verge of breaking his programming and screaming, outright kicking at the man and trying to claw his way back down. “You’re telling me that they don’t even have that?”  
   “We don’t know actually. If Cole kept a record of their names anywhere, we don’t have it. And we can’t exactly ask them.” She waved a hand towards the boys still behind the glass. “Maybe they’ll start talking to you when they get comfortable enough for it. If they can even talk yet. We’ve gotten a very limited read on their developmental progress.”  
   “You’re not supposed to name a stray if you’re not gonna keep it.”  
   The nurse let out a quiet breath. “if you really want to make it harder on yourself, I can’t stop you.”  
   “Right. That’s the part that’s going to make this hard.”  
   The man came back for the next boy. This one wasn’t shrinking back like the others, even as the brother beside him — the boy Hank recognized from the photo — tried to pull him back. The boy being taken looked every bit as uncomfortable and wide-eyed as the rest, but he didn’t fight the man. He didn’t help either, going limp like a cat when he was picked up. His brother held on to his sleeve for as long as his little fingers could managed, almost dragging himself along with them, but the woman gently pulled him back. The boy being taken stared back at his crying brother, his expression more interested than worried, as if his brother’s reaction was fascinating than wherever he was being taken.  
   The nurse was checking the readout on her bracelet every minute or so with increasing anxiety. “Please, Mr. Anderson,” she said. “I’m just trying to make this whole process easier for you and them.”  
   Hank threw his hands up. “Fine! You want names? There’s seven of them, right?”  
   The boy’s eyes darted around the room as they came out from behind the glass, taking in each stranger and the new noises around him. His focus shifted to Hank just as Hank pointed a finger at him.  
   “That one’s Monday. Figure it out from there. I’ll be in my car.”  
   “Sir, wait, you can’t just—”  
   But he was already out of the room.

 

 


End file.
